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Stillness: A very cool presentation skill

I want to sing the praises of stillness.  I used to love, and aspire to, extravagant energy and zeal.  Arms waving, voice elevated, eyes wide open and shining with conviction.

Now I enjoy stillness, a sense of calmness in a speaker.  Of course, I don’t want him or her to be calm all the time—the Johnnie One-Note of stillness—but I like seeing moments of animation contrasted with something that is at rest inside.

There is a Buddhist story of a man who was convicted of a crime and sentenced to being an oil-carrier.  Whenever the emperor needed some sacred oil in one of his temples, the convicted man had to carry it brimming in a shallow bowl to the altar.

If he spilled one drop, the soldier, who always walked one step behind him, would slice off his head.

One day, when the oil-carrier was moving through a busy street with a bowl full of oil, and the soldier behind him, a crowd gathered to watch the most beautiful woman in China dance to a chorus of hypnotic instruments.

The oil-carrier stopped…and lived.

How still was he?